A Law of Game Theory

The Law of Proximity

The game inside a nation decides how it acts toward others.

“You are always playing many games at once, and the game most proximate to you — the one closest, the one you can see — drives your decisions the most.”

In one paragraph Jiang's correction to the others: it tells you which game the formula is really being played for. Every actor plays nested games at once, and the closest, most internal game dominates. Scaled to geopolitics: we think the decisive contest is between nations, but really it is within each nation, and that internal civil conflict determines external behavior. To understand a foreign war, decode each combatant's domestic struggle.

The games you play at once

World — the contest between civilizations

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Nation — China vs. Japan

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City — Beijing vs. Shanghai

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School / Work — popularity, the boss's favor, grades

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Family — win your parents' attention

The innermost game — the one closest to you — drives your decisions the most.

The three civil wars driving the global one

Nation	The internal conflict	Where it pushes the country
United States	Elite vs. counter-elite (Wall Street vs. Silicon Valley; who gets the bailout)	Toward domestic conflict, even civil war
Israel	Tel Aviv vs. Jerusalem (secular “animal soul” vs. theocratic “divine soul”)	Toward theocracy
Iran	Theocracy vs. secular nationalists	Toward radicalization on both sides

What it says

An individual is, at any moment, playing a family game, a school or work game, a city game, a national game — and the most proximate one, the one right in front of you, governs your behavior most. Jiang transfers this to nations: "the game is within nations, and the conflict within nations determines how nations behave against each other." His striking corollary is a mechanism for the assassinations rippling through the current war: rival domestic factions leak intelligence to the foreign enemy in order to eliminate their internal rivals.

Why internal conflict drives foreign wars

Jiang's best game-theoretic explanation for the wave of leadership assassinations on all sides: factions feed intelligence to the enemy to take out their domestic rivals. He is explicit that he has no proof — "I don't have evidence, but…" — and offers it as the most parsimonious read of how so many senior figures are being killed at once.

Why you must not kill the enemy's leader

A gang-war corollary: killing the other side's leader is a mistake, because (1) you need an authoritative leader who can actually sign a peace, and (2) decapitation triggers a succession contest won by the most violent figure, removing every off-ramp. He argues that killing a pragmatist who could broker a ceasefire guarantees the war is "fought to the bitter end.

In Jiang's words

“We think the game is between nations, but really the game is within nations. And the conflict within nations is the one that determines how nations behave against each other.”— GT#14

“The game most important to you is the game you are most close to — the one you can see in front of you.”— GT#14

“These factions are providing intelligence to their enemies in order to limit their internal enemies. That's the best explanation for how these leaders are getting killed.”— GT#14

Where he applies it

The U.S. read as elite vs. counter-elite — a finance establishment against a Silicon Valley insurgency, fighting over which bubble gets the bailout.
Israel read as Tel Aviv (secular, cosmopolitan) against Jerusalem (theocratic, traditional).
Iran read as clerical theocracy against secular Persian nationalism.

What it predicts

From the Law of Proximity, Jiang forecasts:

The world becomes markedly more theocratic over the next 5–10 years — Iran, Israel and even America moving away from secular democracy.
A U.S. elite-vs-counter-elite struggle hardens toward civil conflict.